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Grace insisted on stuffing her backpack full with trinkets and treasures necessary for our outing.

These included a doll-size teacup, a fistful of Paw Patrol Band-Aids, and two baby dolls that had been touched with so many filthy fingers that their plastic skin had turned an odd shade of gray.

Liv contributed the torso of a Barbie to the backpack, and Grace did not object.

Grace hung her backpack on the handle of her toy stroller, then put the dolls in the stroller.

There was not enough room for both of them, as I warned her there would not be, but she was determined to make them fit.

She grunted and whined, and I offered to help, but she said “No” and swatted my hand away.

I decided it did not qualify as hitting, though Kyle would have disagreed.

He thinks the girls need more discipline.

I don’t disagree, but discipline involves an ongoing cycle of reprimanding and redirecting, which would require a reserve of energy I do not have.

I closed my eyes. I told myself to breathe.

I pretended to be a yogi, someone enlightened.

But I couldn’t get a full breath into my lungs, just fast, shallow ones.

It’s like I’m in a perpetual state of hyperventilating.

There are many times I wonder if I should smoke weed.

Or take edibles. Instagram keeps serving me ads for a THC-infused sparkling beverage.

There are so many options for dissociating these days.

When I opened my eyes, Grace had made the dolls fit, one sitting on the other’s lap, their legs weirdly bent and contorted in a way that did not bother her at all.

“Ready?” I asked with a smile that any adult would identify as fake, forced. The girls are not that sophisticated yet. They take upturned lips for what they look like.

“Ready,” Grace confirmed.

“Ready,” Liv repeated.

“Can we say bye to Daddy?” Grace asked.

I sighed again.

“He might be on a call, but we can check.”

We went to his office. Kyle is a sales representative for a pharmaceutical company.

He has always worked from home (in between on-site meetings with customers).

Before, when I went into an office every day and the girls went to day care, he worked at the kitchen island, on the living room couch, anywhere he pleased.

Now, he’s holed up in the guest-room-turned-office, hiding from the chaos that is his family.

I pressed my ear to the door and heard nothing. It’s usually obvious from several rooms away if he’s on a call because his voice is unnaturally loud.

“Go ahead, sweetie,” I told Grace.

She clasped the doorknob with both her tiny hands, still chubby with dimples instead of knuckles, and my heart swelled with so much affection for her that I thought I could cry. There is nothing like the emotional whiplash of motherhood.

She opened the door and walked in, Liv toddling behind her.

I brought up the rear, which was strategic.

If I walk in first in these instances, Kyle gives me a look of annoyance before transforming his face for the girls’ benefit.

If the girls walk in first, there is no opportunity to give me the Look.

“Daddy!” Grace said.

“Daddy!” Liv repeated.

Grace climbed into his lap, and Liv wrapped her arms around his legs.

He had his wireless earbuds in, ready and waiting for his next call.

He is the most successful sales rep in Southern California.

I’m proud of him, I am. From the moment I met him, he wanted to be exactly who he is now.

He works hard. He takes his role as primary provider seriously.

I just wish his accomplishments didn’t make my own impossible.

When Grace was an infant, Kyle looked at me breastfeeding her and said, “Look at you—you’re made for this.

” He was clearly oblivious to the fact that she had nearly torn off my nipple the first time she latched, which then led me to hire a lactation consultant to coach me through breastfeeding with “the wound” (her words).

I appreciated his obliviousness because I wanted him—and everyone—to think I was blissfully bonding with my baby without complication (and certainly without “wounds”).

I made the mistake of taking his comment—“You’re made for this”—as a compliment.

I made the mistake of feeling a surge of smug pride.

It’s only now that I wonder if the remark was an assignment for me, an unconscious way of letting himself off the hook.

“You girls getting ready for a nap?” Kyle asked them.

It was nowhere near nap time.

I’m never sure how ignorant Kyle actually is.

Sometimes, I think he says and does things purposefully to remind me of his incompetence, to reconfirm my assignment.

The other day, Grace asked him to move her new dollhouse from the living room to the kitchen, and he picked it up by its roof, which led to the whole thing dismantling, hours of my engineering work undone.

He looked at me like Oh shucks and said he would rebuild it.

And I believe he would have. In his own time.

But I knew the girls would whine until it was fixed, and I’d nag Kyle, and Kyle would be annoyed with me for nagging him, and I’d be annoyed with myself for being the Nag.

So I just did it myself that night after putting the girls to sleep.

When Kyle saw it reassembled the next morning, he kissed me on the cheek and said, “Supermom to the rescue!”

“We’re going to the park!” Grace told him.

“That sounds fun,” he said.

Does he really think it sounds fun? Maybe he does.

Maybe I’m the weird one for failing to find the joy.

Whenever I talk to him about my fatigue, my boredom, my discontent, he says things like “It’s not as bad as all that, is it?

” or “Babe, come on—you got this.” But I don’t got this.

Resentments are bubbling up like hot lava through cracks of black earth.

“Daddy has to make a call,” he told the girls, looking back at his computer, clicking through his email with one hand.

I ushered them out of the room and closed the door behind us. Then we went to the garage, and I spent five minutes trying to convince Grace to sit in the double stroller with her sister instead of pushing her babies in the toy stroller.

“I can attach the toy stroller to the back of the big stroller, okay?”

Tears sprang from her eyes with alarming force, which then made tears spring from Liv’s eyes with alarming force.

“But I want to push my babies,” Grace cried, collapsing onto her knees like an actor in a Shakespearean tragedy.

“It will take us forever to get to the park that way,” I told her. This was the truth. Toddlers do not walk anywhere with purpose. They are like village drunks, wandering haphazardly.

“But I want to!”

My skin began to prickle with an oncoming flash of heat.

“Okay, then no park,” I said, my voice sterner, bordering on shouting.

This caused more tears from both of them.

“Girls, let’s take a deep breath, okay?”

They did not listen. They continued to fuss and whine. I fanned myself with my hands, overheated by rage or hormonal mayhem.

“If you want to go to the park, both of you need to sit in the stroller, okay? We can play with the baby dolls when we get to the park.”

Their crying slowly began to subside. My body cooled. I began to feel victorious.

“Fine,” Grace said, arms crossed over her chest.

I lifted each of them into the stroller, the muscles in my back angry. I’m sorry, I often tell my body, this body I don’t recognize as my own some days. I am a mother now. I must sacrifice you for them. I imagine my back is not happy about this, so it continues to bring me pain.

“Here we go,” I told the girls.

And off we went.

When the girls were babies, I surprised myself by relishing the all-consuming love for them.

They were so helpless and fragile. Their neediness infused me with purpose and pride.

As they’ve grown, the all-consuming love has felt parasitic, as if they are sucking me dry of all life-giving force.

Now their neediness infuses me with panic.

“Mommy, did you bring snacks?” Grace asked.

We had made it just twenty feet past our driveway.

“Of course,” I said.

“Snacks!” Liv yelled.

I do not travel anywhere without snacks—goldfish crackers, graham crackers, saltine crackers, so many crackers.

I placed a graham cracker on each of their trays and braced myself for the whining. Is it normal to fear one’s own offspring, to approach them like they are live grenades? There are two options: detonate successfully or be blown to smithereens.

Liv began nibbling at her cracker, but Grace said, “I don’t want this.”

Liv has been a good eater so far, but Grace is never pleased. I saw a meme on Instagram the other day— The best way to ruin a toddler’s day: ask them what they want for lunch, then make that.

“Gracie, you love graham crackers,” I told her, then immediately chastised myself for wasting these words. It’s laughable, my ongoing loyalty to logic. “We just bought these the other day, remember?”

I braced myself for more whining. It’s no wonder my neck is always sore—most hours of the day, my shoulders remain up near my ears in tense anticipation.

“No,” she said, throwing it on the sidewalk. Liv then did the same, though I knew she was enjoying her graham cracker. She is going to be a sheep, I fear, the girl who copies whatever her friends are doing. I will have to worry about her smoking pot and piercing body parts and exposing her midriff.